Cotton-Pickin’ Days

There’s got to be a first time for everything, right? This morning, another child’s mother accused Stephen of scratching her son. Two 2 mm scratches - one on the side of his nose and one next to his mouth. The teachers never saw anything nor did the child report it to the teachers.

It’s probably better not to give any specifics about what happened this morning, but here’s what I think about children and altercations at school.

1. Think highly of your children but not to the point where you believe they’re perfect and above reproach. Four-year-olds will say anything to please their mothers. Yes, they will even lie. (Heck, I know I did.) They probably don’t do it intentionally but seeing that their mother is upset about something, they’ll come up with the easiest explanation that will redirect their mother’s anxiety.
2. Show your child you understand that they believe they’re telling their own version of the truth, but also let them know that you need to confirm the facts. Everyone sees things differently.
3. Speak to the teachers. Do not confront the parents because only the teachers are at school to bear witness.
4. Talk to people in private. Don’t make a scene. It makes everyone uncomfortable, especially the children.
5. Stick to reality. Do not exaggerate a few tiny, barely noticeable scratches into missing eyeballs.
6. Be logical. For example, a child (Stephen) with nonexistent fingernails can’t scratch effectively and a child with MANY younger sisters can’t possibly escape each day unscathed.
7. Understand that children do get bumps, bruises, and scratches at school. Don’t make a big deal out of everything, it will only teach your child that every little thing deserves an unjustified amount of attention. I always tell Stephen to suck it up and keep going. Life is too short not to enjoy it just because of a few little owies. Not to mention that there’s so much to be accomplished, we have no time to sit around being a victim.
8. Teach your child to defend his turf. Stephen will never be encouraged to go on the offensive, but he has been taught to stand up for himself. If your child is claiming that he’s being pushed around at school (but not to the point where he’s suffering serious harm, whether emotionally or physically), you need to teach him to stand up for himself, tell the aggressor “NO,” and report it the teacher if necessary.
9. Have a good relationship with your child’s teachers and the other classroom helpers so that they feel more motivated to pay attention to your child. Let your children know that the adults in the classroom are their allies so if there are any issues, they should be free to go to them to resolve the problem immediately. If anything deserves to be discussed with the parents, the teachers should be the one to bring it up. By the time a child comes home telling his mother that someone has wronged him, it’s too late.
10. Take your antidepressants and antipsychotic medication every day. (This tip courtesy of Christina.)

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m glad Stephen isn’t the victimized tattletale. His mother was always the one kicking butt and if I have anything to do about it, Stephen will be the same.

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What a crazy morning! I went with Stephen’s class to the local church on a school field trip. As far as I could tell, the other children behaved beautifully while Stephen was acting up. I’m not sure if I should be volunteering much in his class anymore since it appears he has issues with me being there. The teachers don’t seem to think it’s a big deal, though, and always encourage me to be involved.

I want to be active in his class, but not if it causes a disruption. The worst thing is, I’m not sure he got anything out of the experience. I was giving him a quiz about the type of windows, benches, and statues in the church and he was being completely ornery pretending like he didn’t know what in the world I was talking about. Will have to give him a strict talking to before the next time.

Thank goodness I get some respect in other corners of the world. Margarita Bauza, Work Life Reporter of the Detroit Free Press, included me today in a story about medical blogs and patient-doctor confidentiality. I’m quite pleased with the juicy quotes attributed to me and think the whole series is worth a read for anyone interested in medical and healthcare blogging.

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Stephen’s been attending school in London for a year now. During this time, I’ve had the chance to observe some interesting practices. One thing I’ve noticed is the frequent use of the word “clever.”

At first I was uncomfortable with clever because I don’t believe in praising children for their innate ability but more for their specific efforts*. But then I thought that maybe, as an American, my interpretation of clever might be different than what’s intended here in Britain. I think of clever as being the same as intelligent or smart but clever can actually have a number of definitions.

1. mentally bright; having sharp or quick intelligence; able.
2. superficially skillful, witty, or original in character or construction; facile
3. showing inventiveness or originality; ingenious
4. adroit with the hands or body; dexterous or nimble.

Now I’m starting to think clever is fine praise as long as it’s accompanied by a reminder to work hard, try and try again, and push past the inevitable failure and disappointment.

David Goodman, a 15-year-old participant in the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (Nagty) in the UK, seems to really get that:

I’m hardly a genius or anything. I’m reasonably clever, I suppose, but I just try to work hard.

~BBC News

*Don’t miss this New York Magazine article on “the inverse power of praise.”

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We are the only Chinese family in Stephen’s class. There is one more that we know of for sure in another class but I’ve never seen another obvious-looking Chinese child in the school, which numbers around 200 children. That’s not to say Stephen’s school isn’t multi-cultural. In fact, it is extremely mixed in terms of race and income levels especially given the small student body.

On Thursday, I will be representing all Chinese people at the school’s reading week. I’ve been asked to read to the children the Three Little Pigs in Chinese as well as two other books in English that feature Chinese children - The Magic Paintbrush and Cleversticks. I’m not quite up to the task of reading aloud in Chinese and will have to do some practicing before the big day although my clever mommy friend said that no one would know if I were faking it.

But…I think Stephen might know. Over the past few weeks, we’ve made a conscious effort to introduce more Mandarin Chinese into our daily conversation. Since he loves to parrot us, it’s working out quite well. He can count from 1 to 10 in Chinese and takes a great deal of interest in our Chinese version of the Three Little Pigs, noting where characters repeat and asking for translations. He even likes to say that he’s speaking Chinese and comes up with sounds that vaguely resemble the language.

And then the other day, while at a friend’s house, the older boy was doing his homework. For some reason, Stephen wanted to do “homework” too and covered a piece of paper with hieroglyphics which he claimed were Chinese characters.

There’s hope yet. Just got to think about how to teach the whole family Urdu.

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Sit properly! Point to each word! Speak clearly! What’s this word? This one’s just like that one but with an “H.” What is this word? Just read it then you can go do something else. Read this list. Again. Again. Again! Read it until you get it right. OK. One more time. Concentrate!

I have completely lost the plot.

Stephen’s been learning to read using the Oxford Reading Tree series. Each week, he gets three books - one is “to tell” without any words, just pictures and the other two are “to read” with simple, repetitive sentences. Every few weeks, he also gets a list of words to learn. In addition, we have the flash cards at home and a copy of The Spaceship that’s part of the Oxford Reading Tree Read At Home series. We even get the related BBC children’s magazine, The Magic Key, on occasion.

Sounds overboard? It gets worse.

Somewhere along the way, almost from the start, I treated the school reading assignments like drills. Instead of enjoying the pictures and the story with Stephen and taking the time to talk over what antics main character Kipper was up to, I just wanted Stephen to read the words again and again and again until he got them right. My focus was on making sure that on his reading day (Tuesday), he’d be ready to recite the book without faltering. And he did a good job every week.

But, this past week, I pushed a little too hard. He just couldn’t get the word “my.” Everytime he saw the letter Y, he’d think it was for “yes.” So we went over the book again and again, especially the little list of vocab words on the back cover that I’m not even really sure we were supposed to consider. On the first couple of days during reading time, he would make a funny puppy panting sound when he got stuck on words. He even told me he didn’t want to read the books anymore.

Uh oh. I’d screwed up big time.

Luckily, Stephen was still willing to read the books on the following day and it got easier. He got stuck but could remember with just a bit of prompting. He still made the puppy sound but only because he thought it was funny. On his reading day yesterday, he was so pleased he could remember the word “my,” that he got his books out before classtime and read to the other parents on the playground.

Totally nuts! But at least I hadn’t ruined reading for him.

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Today, I was at Stephen’s school helping the kids put on their costumes for the annual Christmas show. During the chaos, I videotaped them milling about dressed as angels, snowmen, and stars and also took some photos. At first, I intended to take a picture of everyone to make sure that all were included then get the shots developed later this week. But soon, one of the teachers came over and whispered that technically, I shouldn’t be taking photos of other people’s kids because a parent in another class had specifically requested that their child not be photographed. What the @#!

I couldn’t believe that the type of parents Esther Rantzen wrote about in the Times Online in October really do exist! She is the founder of ChildLine, a toll free number in the UK which children can dial and ask for help with abuse. In the piece, she touched on the difficulty of balancing between protecting our children and overprotecting them.

The truth is that paedophiles are unscrupulous and cunning and they have taken jobs as school bus drivers, sports coaches and youth club leaders to gain access to children.

However, the letter does express a real fear. Over the past 20 years, alongside sensible advances such as the creation of commissioners for children and a minister for children, there have been examples of daft over-zealousness.

Why on earth prevent parents taking photographs of their children performing in a nativity play or pictures of their children playing football? The five-year-old who plays Joseph at Christmas time, the 10-year-old who scores a miraculous goal for his team, deserve their place in the family album.

The loss of innocent contact is a real deprivation for a child. Why shouldn?t a teacher cuddle a six-year-old who has fallen down in the playground? It would be a tragedy if fathers were inhibited from hugging their daughters. The abused children I have met desperately want and need the ?safe cuddles? that they never receive. We do all children a huge disservice by assuming that all adults are paedophiles.

I have always taken care not to post pictures of other children’s faces and am even shying away from posting pictures of Stephen. And, thankfully, since the teachers know me well, I wasn’t thrown in jail today. Even more important, Stephen is here with me, well loved and cared for.

If you’re a kid living in the UK and need someone to talk to about any problem, call ChildLine. They’ve got counsellors who can help you. 0800 1111

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Stephen’s home sick today with a nasty productive cough that starts up when he tries to talk, which is ALL THE TIME. The teachers love to tell me how much he talks at school.

One said:

He must be wonderful company when your husband’s not around. You can do your reading, and he’ll just keep on talking as long as you nod or say the occasional ‘uh huh.’

Another said:

I could make a cup of tea, put my feet up, and he could talk for all of England.

I was feeling a tiny bit embarrassed but actually more proud than anything else. Talking or oral language is considered a key foundation of literacy. From Raising Lifelong Learners by Lucy Calkins with Lydia Bellino:

…by the time our toddlers are of school age, we take their talk for granted. We have turned all our attention to their reading and writing, not realizing that talk is still the motor that propels their intellectual development. It is through talk that children learn to follow and tell stories, understand logical sequences, recognizing causes, anticipate consequences, explore options, and consider motives.

So instead of saying “please be quiet,” I am trying to given Stephen ample opportunity to talk, talk, talk, and talk some more. Much of the time it feels like he’s giving some sort of lecture or seminar! Hilarious. It also sounds like his teachers are rather tolerant of his chatterbox ways and we are truly grateful.

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If I were a betting woman, I would bet that a number of students plagiarize Genetics and Health for their homework. And a few of them are even bold enough to ask for help:

# michael Says:
November 20th, 2006 at 10:28 pm

Inmagine a classroom containig 20 atudents. Describe the positioning and movement o fthe students in this classroom if they were to represrnt the gas, liquid, and solid states of matter. CAN YOU ANSWER THIS IF YOU CAN PLEASE GIVE ME THE CORRECT AND EXCEPTABLE ANSWER PLEASE PLEASE I?M ONLY IN THE 10TH GRADE

My reply:

michael: I?m sorry I can?t help you do your homework. Looks like you might want to work on your typing and spelling too along with science.

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With Stephen now at school full days (no tears this first morning from either of us!), I decided to set-up a home office in the guest bedroom. It’s away from the kitchen and temptation. And, it’s got a much better view than the courtyard.

It’s 11:15 am now and it feels so odd not to be rushing out the door to pick him up. Another four hours of productivity. I hope to get most of my work done before Stephen comes home. Anything left undone can be finished after he goes to bed. If past behavior tells me anything, he’ll be wound up when he gets home and will neet a lot of attention.

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One of the greatest things about Stephen’s school here in London is the children’s wide variety of backgrounds. The school has children from families of all ethnicities - British, Chinese, Indian, Eastern European, etc., different incomes, and social classes.

What I hope Stephen will learn from being immersed in such a diverse group of children is tolerance and appreciation for similarities and differences. While it’s clear that we are not all exactly the same or even equal in many respects, we can learn to enjoy each other’s company. Snobbery is not endearing nor will it serve him in the future.

Compassion is where it’s at. The ability to sympathize with other people’s situations and others’ views of life is invaluable and is what will ensure a person’s success. Of course I’m pleased when the teacher tells me that his knowledge of the world surpasses what is expected at his age but what I am really focusing on is his social development.

Can he get along with others? Is he sensitive to others’ moods, especially when someone is hurt either physically or mentally? Does he know how to cooperate with other children to complete a task? Is he able to enjoy himself and play with everyone in the class?

Looking down on (or even up to) people should not be a way of life. It’s something I work on every day and something I will try to teach Stephen too.

NB: The cartoon above is a crop of the diversity cartoon from A Perfect World.

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